Robtel Neajai Pailey
Robtel Neajai Pailey is a Liberian scholar-activist with more than 20 years of combined personal and professional experiences in Africa, Europe and North America. Her core areas of research expertise include the political economy of development, migration, conflict, post-war recovery, governance and race. She has conducted multi-sited fieldwork in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Denmark, Ghana, India, Lebanon, Liberia, Niger, Sierra Leone, Somaliland, the United Kingdom and United States.
Robtel is author of the monograph Development, (Dual) Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa: The Political Economy of Belonging to Liberia (Cambridge University Press, 2021), which won both the 2022 African Politics Conference Group (APCG) Best Book Award and the 2023 African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA) Pius Adesanmi Memorial Award for Excellence in African Writing as well as contributed to the passage of Liberia’s dual citizenship law. Her research has also been published in scholarly journals including Liberian Studies Journal, Citizenship Studies, Review of African Political Economy, African Affairs, Migration Studies, Democratization, Development and Change, Third World Quarterly; as well as in edited volumes such as The Essential Guide to Critical Development Studies (2021), Oxford Encyclopedia of African Politics (2020), Leadership in Post-colonial Africa: Trends Transformed by Independence (2014) and From the Slave Trade to ‘Free’ Trade: How Trade Undermines Democracy and Justice in Africa (2007), amongst others. An increasingly sought-after thought leader and public scholar, she has provided expert commentary for radio, print, television and online news media across the globe.
Robtel obtained BA degrees in African Studies and English Literature from Howard University in 2004, an MSc in African Studies from the University of Oxford in 2007 and a PhD in Development Studies from SOAS, University of London, in 2014. In July 2024, she served as 177th Independence Day National Orator of the Republic of Liberia and was inducted into the Order of the Star of Africa, one of the country’s highest civilian honours, for her ‘distinguished service’. Previously an Ibrahim Leadership Fellow at the African Development Bank Group and Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Oxford, Robtel currently serves as Assistant Professor in International Social and Public Policy at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
Recent publications:
Pailey, R. N. (2021). Development, (Dual) Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa: The Political Economy of Belonging to Liberia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pailey, R. N. (2024). Stopping Firestone and Starting a Citizen ‘Revolution from Below’: Reflections on the Enduring Exploitation of Liberian Land and Labour. Third World Quarterly 45(1), 61-78.
Pailey, R. N. (2021). Race in/and Development. In Henry Veltmeyer and Paul Bowles (eds) The Essential Guide to Critical Development Studies (2nd edition). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 31-39.
Pailey, R. N. (2020). De-centring the ‘White Gaze’ of Development. Development and Change 51(3), 729-745.
Pailey, R. N. & Harris, D. (2020). 'We Don’t Know Who Be Who': Post-party Politics, Forum Shopping and Liberia’s 2017 Elections. Democratization 27(5), 758-776.